IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump EPA holds climate hearings in Coal Country; Winter heat wave hits Greenland and breaks records in the U.S. West; New federal contracting scandal exposed in Puerto Rico's very slow recovery; PLUS: Good news for breathers in Wisconsin and Missouri... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

The Trump administration has successfully convinced West Virginians that they'll never have to give up on coal...This narrative appears to be taking hold among West Virginians. "It definitely looks good for coal, looks good for my future," David Murray, one of the miners at Tuesday's barbecue told me...Those who make money and gain power from coal's dominance know that no amount of deregulation can arrest coal's inevitable decline. But when they're face-to-face with West Virginians, like this week in Charleston, they elide that reality and claim that coal will never die, and indeed will grow.

Stanley Sturgill, a retired Kentucky coal miner who has become an activist, started out at 3 a.m. to get to the hearing. Now 71 and afflicted with black lung and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he called repealing the plan "immoral and indefensible." He repeated a comment he gave in support of the plan in 2014: "We're dying, literally dying, for you to help us."

FEMA eventually terminated the contracts, without paying any money, and re-started the process this month to supply more tarps for the island. The earlier effort took nearly four weeks from the day FEMA awarded the contracts to Bronze Star and the day it canceled them...It is not clear how thoroughly FEMA investigated Bronze Star or its ability to fulfill the contracts. Formed by two brothers in August, Bronze Star had never before won a government contract or delivered tarps or plastic sheeting. The address listed for the business is a single-family home in a residential subdivision in St. Cloud, Florida.

The far-reaching legislation would grant $62 billion to the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, $27 billion to renovate infrastructure, and $13 billion in additional Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to rebuild the electric grid "with more modern, resilient technologies," instead of the Stafford Act's requirements that the grid be restored to its condition before the storms, according to a summary of the bill from Sanders's office.

Sanders allocates $270 million for Puerto Rico and $20 million for the US Virgin Islands for renewable energy and energy efficiency grants for local municipalities and homeowners; $8.55 billion over 10 years for their infrastructure and jobs programs; $34 million to restore clean drinking water and sewage disposal; $200 million for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; and the elimination of the cap on general Medicaid funding for US territories. The island has historically not been reimbursed by the federal government at the same rate as states, which, island officials say, means they may be forced to remove up to 500,000 people from Medicaid.

"It is critically important and I don't think anybody knows it is stuck in a tax bill," said Senator Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat who led the 2005 fight against drilling in the refuge. "It's been around for thousands of years, and for no good reason we're going to change it? Is there no such thing as a special place?''

Environmentalists, Alaska Natives like the Gwich'in, and even nuns disagree. They don't want to see any segment of the ANWR opened up to drilling. The refuge's been around since 1960, and exists to protect fauna and flora, and to ensure people like the Gwich'in can continue to live off the land and animals...Many environmentalists criticized the Murkowski's effort to tie drilling in ANWR to a tax bill, calling it a "shameless hijacking of the federal budget process."

Empire’s proposed shift from coal to wind is striking on multiple levels. First are the projected customer savings touted by the company, which it says could amount to $325 million over 20 years, or nearly $10 per month for an average residential power user. But the transition is also noteworthy for the speed at which it is happening.

To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate - so every reduction in emissions helps.

Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it's possible for the whole world to run on renewables - we merely lack the "political will." So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.